This presentation is based on my doctoral research. The aim of my doctoral thesis is to inform teaching and learning practices of academic writing. My research explored tertiary student and staff understandings of academic literacy and what students and staff identified as helpful and unhelpful for students with their academic writing. This presentation reports on what students and staff identified as helpful and unhelpful. Staff and students identified a range of practices and also resources at the level of the institution (such as the library), at the level of the course (writing instruction given in tutorials) and at the level of students (students initiated assistance from family and friends). It was found that the divergences between what students and staff considered helpful was greater in the first than the second year. The reason could be that students appeared to have a shift in understanding from their first to second year of study.